


Heartbeat

by orphan_account



Category: Internet Personalities, Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Death, Death, Depression, Emotional, Existentialism, Gen, I'm Sorry, Murder, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Sad, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7907845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan started screaming, a tortured and tormented sound. Never had anything sounded so pained, so full of angst and anguish. He hugged Phil's lifeless form into his body tightly. Sobs wracked his body, causing him to shake. And then he started screaming Phil's name, as if he thought Phil would magically wake up. But Phil was dead, and he was never coming back. He was just a memory now: a person to be remembered.</p><p>~</p><p>All Phil wanted to do was to buy Dan a celebratory bottle of champagne for reaching five million subscribers. But the world is a cruel place, and life is so fragile, a thing so easily ripped away from us. We all die, some sooner than others, and Phil Lester is no exception to this rule.</p><p>~</p><p>Alternating POVs: a lot of Dan's, some of Phil's, and a very small section of third person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbeat

**Phil's POV**

I placed the bottle of champagne on the counter carefully, as my clumsiness affected me at the worst of times, so I wouldn't put it past myself to accidentally release the pressure from the bottle early. I'd usually just accept the fact that I might need to buy a new bottle, but at this price, the idea was laughable. Yes, YouTube did pay me well with all the add revenue, but even someone with a little more money wouldn't want to pay another £150 if it was avoidable.

"That'll be one hundred and fifty pounds, sir," the cashier said, rubbing his hands together at the prospect of the large sum of cash he was about to get. I shook my head slightly; for a shop of this size, a profit of £150 should have received an ordinary reaction. Nonetheless, I didn't want to waste my time pondering over the cost of a bottle of champagne, so I reached into my pocket and handed the man eight twenties.

As he was reaching into the cash register for my change, he addressed me suddenly, trying to engage me in a conversation none of us were interested in, "Special occasion, huh? I don't see folk around here often that are willing to make such... exorbitant purchases."

"It's none of your business, sir." I replied, clicking impatiently with my tongue. Normally, I would be all for the small talk, but today wasn't one of those days. I wanted to get home to Dan, as I had bought this bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that he'd reached five million subscribers. People sometimes asked if I was jealous that his channel was more popular than mine, but I always reassured them that I was quite the opposite. Every milestone he reached gave me a sense of achievement, knowing that I was the one who encouraged him to start a channel.

"Ah, yes, of course," he said, handing me my change. I stuffed the money into the back pocket of my jeans, nodding curtly at the man behind the counter, before turning away and wandering out of the store into the dimly lit street. I breathed out of my nose slowly, relaxing as the cool air hit my face. I could see the stars in the sky that night, which was a surprise to me; in London, you usually couldn't because the air was so dirty, so polluted.

But then, well, it was different. They contrasted beautifully against the darkness of the night sky, and it was very aesthetically pleasing to see something that had become somewhat of a rarity for me at that point in my life. Everyone seemed to think of the tourist side of London, and never really realised what went on behind the scenes. The truth was, I never really got to see beautiful things all that often. Except when I looked at Dan, but he was on a whole new level.

Beauty couldn't even begin to define him. Dan was more than just _that_ , he was perfection. His chiseled cheekbones, his smooth, wavy hair, and his eyes. His gorgeous brown eyes were undoubtedly the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and I could get myself lost in them forever. _And damn, I wanted to kiss those lips right off his face._

I sighed. Dan was straight, no matter what the Phandom seemed to think. There was no 'Heart Eyes Howell' or anything like that, there was just Dan. Except he wasn't 'just Dan', not to me at least. And I felt myself going into a downwards spiral again, yearning, aching, craving, lusting and the pain. There was so much pain. It burned inside of me, the light never diminishing, only glowing brighter, more unbearable by the minute. I needed Dan. So much.

It was so hard for me, having such a huge part of myself hidden away. I couldn't tell anyone. Nobody would understand, nobody could know my pain. I didn't want to draw attention to myself. Even if I did want to say something, I didn't even think my brain would allow me to say it. Most likely, I'd stand there stuttering for ages, before running off to cry. But I always cried. That was nothing new.

I didn't want to be this person, whoever that was. I wanted to be happy both on the inside, and on the outside. I wanted to rip this mask of my face, but I didn't have the courage. I just wanted Dan. The physical and emotional ache coursed through my body, my veins, my being. There was no cure to this, except the obvious, but Dan would never love me like that. Nobody would ever love me like that, but I didn't just want anybody. Dan was, and always would be, the only guy I ever longed for. _I love you, Dan._

"Pull yourself together, Phil." I whispered to myself. I couldn't keep doing this: I couldn't keep breaking down mentally every time that my thoughts lingered on Dan for any conceivable amount of time. I knew it wasn't healthy for me, especially since I forced myself to be happy on the outside so often that the inside was slowly and painfully deteriorating with the pain of it.

I mean, I wasn't sad all the time, and I did have times where I was actually happy, but a lot of the time that just simply wasn't the case. It'd been that way ever since Dan had walked into my life, and I could never blame him for any of this. It was my own stupid fault for falling in love with him: my best friend. I was an idiot, and I knew it.

I was awoken from my thoughts when I felt something hard pressing into me. A moment later, a hooded figure ran past me, and was swallowed by the darkness of the unlit street a moment later. I started after them, but I was suddenly met by a throbbing pain in my chest. I pressed my hand against it. My hand felt warm and sticky as it made contact. I pulled it away, and I nearly threw up when I was met with the sight of my bloodied hand. I dropped the bottle of champagne, hearing it smash on the concrete.

I peered down at my chest, and the pain suddenly exploded inside of me. My torso was partially covered in blood as it continually seeped out of the wound that resided there. My vision blurred for a second, my head feeling woozy and unfocused. My heart sped up a thousand paces, trying to compensate for all the oxygen lost through the blood that was no longer in my body. I looked up, realising I had been so close to home, so close, in fact, that I could see mine and Dan's house from here.

"DAN," I yelled, panting desperately now, "HELP ME, OH GOD, PLEASE HELP ME!"

I stood there, my body weakening by the second, waiting for Dan to come. As if by miracle, our front door opened, and Dan came running out onto the street in his pyjamas. He looked around frantically, his eyes suddenly locking on me. He began to run again, towards me this time.

A few moments passed, and I suddenly found myself being lowered to the ground by a strong pair of arms. I was going to die, I wasn't stupid. And out of anyone I could be with, I would choose to die in Dan's arms over anything else. His embrace comforted me, it numbed the pain slightly.

"Phil," he whispered, stroking my hair, "hold on for me, Lion. You're going to be okay, everything will be just fine."

\--

**Dan's POV**

I sat impatiently at the kitchen table, tapping my fingers repeatedly against the hard wooden surface. Phil had gone to the shop to get something, but he wouldn't tell me what it was, nor what it was for. I wasn't a huge fan of surprises, but it seemed important to Phil, so who was I to argue with him? I valued his opinion, his well being, his anything above my own. He was the love of my life, but he didn't know that, and he could never know that. I had never had a best friend before, and I really didn't want to fuck it up. If I lost him, it'd kill me.

I felt myself growing restless. I needed to see Phil again. He kept me going, he got rid of the bad feelings, and the voices in my head. Phil was the reason why I wasn't dead. I was an extremely unhappy person before I met him, and I still was, but it got a little bit better when I was with him. And he was the only person who I had ever loved. Phil was the anchor keeping me grounded to this world.

I hated my life, I truly did. These emotions, these feelings, this consciousness, they were all undesirable. Why was I alive? What was the purpose to my existence? There was no purpose, there was nothing. I was an empty glass, one that was filled a tiny bit more when I was with Phil. Maybe one day he could completely fill that emptiness for me. I never got too hopeful though; it was a dream, and that was it. It could never happen. I was too broken, far past the point of complete repair. The voices in my head, they taunted me, they told me to do bad things to myself. I deserved it, they told me, nobody cared, nobody loved me, nobody would miss me. I was useless. I was a faggot: a freak.

"DAN," a voice yelled, "HELP ME, OH GOD, PLEASE HELP ME!"

I froze. That was Phil's voice, and it sounded as if he was in pain. I leapt up from where I was at, and ran towards the front door. Luckily, I had left it unlocked so Phil could get in when he got back. I opened the door and sprinted out onto the street. I looked around hurriedly, my heart sinking when my eyes found Phil's location. He was stood hunched over, swaying as if he couldn't keep himself standing, and his hand was placed on his chest, where blood was blossoming out on his t-shirt. Fuck. Holy shit, _please no._

I ran towards Phil, grabbing him in my arms and lowering him carefully to the floor. I placed his head in my lap, running a hand through his hair as if to comfort him. In actuality, it was more of a comfort to me. I looked at his chest. His t-shirt was slowly turning crimson with the blood that was seeping out of the wound to left side of where his heart would be. It didn't look good. In fact, it looked pretty shit, to put it in simple terms.

"Phil," I whispered, still stroking his hair, "hold on for me, Lion. You're going to be okay, everything will be just fine."

Maybe it would be okay. Doctors could work wonders these days. They could fix Phil, they could make him better. _Oh, who am I kidding? Myself? Am I literally talking bullshit to Phil to reassure him as much as me?_ Yes, I was. I just couldn't accept that fact that he was going to die. The thought of it took me to the darkest corners of my mind, it brought back some of the emotions that I had hidden back there. I shivered.

"Phil, I'm just going to ring an ambulance, okay?" I said, reaching into my pocket for my phone. Phil suddenly grabbed my arm, and I immediately stopped what I was doing to look him in the eyes so he could address me.

"No, don't. Nothing they do will work. Dan, I know I'm going to die today. At least let me spend my last moments with you." He said, urgency present in his voice. I continued to look him in the eyes, seeing the sadness that lay within them. I considered his request, but from the moment he spoke, I already knew which conclusion I would reach, and that conclusion was made easier to come to, with the desire to get rid of that foreign sadness that I could see within him.

"Damnit, Phil, I'd do anything for you. And you're not going to die today. I know you're not. It's too soon. Way too soon." I said, spewing lies that weren't convincing either of us. I wanted it to be true: Phil not dying. But it wasn't true, and I sure as fuck knew that. And yet I still said it. I still lied. _Because lying to Phil was so out of the ordinary._

I lived a lie every single day I was with him. He didn't know the desire I held for him, the aching in my chest every time I referred to him as my 'friend'. He knew nothing about my past, and the bullies that taunted me. He didn't know about the voices, the pain, the anguish. To him, I was Dan: the man who was as happy as anybody, the guy who had only as many emotions as everybody else. I was normal to him. And I felt terrible for hiding myself from him for so long.

"Dan, I know I'm going to die. I can feel it. It's hard to explain how, but I just know, okay?" Phil said, his voice shaky and his breaths short. The rise and fall of his chest was rapid, and increasing as the moments went by. The blood was completely beginning to stain his shirt now, the colour sickening to look at. I lifted my shirt over my head, scrunching it up in my hand before placing it the wound, to either slow or stem the blood flow. The latter was unlikely though, my shirt being what it was: a shirt, not a bandage, not some medical phenomenon that stopped someone from bleeding to death.

Phil stared at my bare chest, causing my heart to flutter slightly, before looking back up into my eyes and speaking, "Dan, I know this isn't a great time to say this, I know it's sudden, and I know I'm a fucking idiot, but I need to tell you this."

I was surprised when I heard him swear, as it was commonly known that he refrained from doing so. But I suppose he didn't care now, as anyone would in his position. It emphasised the severity of the situation though, a lot more than one would expect, "Phil-" I began, but was interrupted by Phil with an intense look. It wasn't a glare, nor was it filled with any hate. There was a fire in his eyes, a paroxysm of passion.

"Dan," he said shakily, "I have to say this before it's too late. I love you. I've known for seven years now: seven fucking years of silence, of pining for you, my best friend. That's one of the things that hurt me the most: having to call you a 'friend'. You were never anything more, and that killed me.

"You see, I'm not as happy as you might think, or as anyone thinks for that matter. Seven years is a long time, Daniel. I've faked a lot of smiles, a lot of laughs. I've denied the 'Love Eyes Lester' comments, denied having feelings for you. But it burns, it hurts, and that never went away. It was painful being around you, but it'd be more painful to walk away. I thought about it for a while, but I didn't have the guts. Your friendship was everything to me. Everything. And I knew I would never recover from your absence.

"I remember the first time we met, I fell in love with you right away. I was so damned nervous. I just wanted to take you in my arms and kiss you. But I didn't do it. You were the person that I'd been looking for, the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I didn't want to fuck anything up.

"But it's killing me, Dan. Every time I'm with you, when I look at you, when I speak to you, when our hands brush when you pass me the salt over the dinner table, my heart flutters, metaphorical electric shocks cause my skin to buzz.

"I feel an absence inside myself without you. You're my other half, my soulmate. Without you, I'm nothing, I'm just Phil. When I'm with you, you help paint happy colours in my mind, you get rid of the greyscale of shades that normally reside there. You're perfect, pure and simply. There's nobody else like you, and there will never be anyone like you. Not for anyone.

"Anyway, what I suppose I'm trying to say is, well, I'm sorry for loving you. I'm sorry that you'll only have a tainted memory of me now. Fuck, Dan, I'm so sorry, so so sorry."

If the tears were threatening to spill before, they definitely had now. I'd wasted so much time hiding my feelings, and all along he had felt the same way. Philip Michael Lester loved me of all people. If only I had known earlier, if only I hadn't been a coward. All that time, all those seven years could've been better spent. We could've been happy. It was my fault, not Phil's. It could never be Phil's. He was too good, a walking angel. "I love you, too," I whispered.

"People die every day. Everyone on this earth, all these billions of people, they will all die some day. I'm just a drop in this oceanic population, and by chance, I met you. We both should've said something sooner, but I have no regrets, neither should you. I'm just honoured to have met you, to have made memories with you." Phil said, coughing slightly as he stopped speaking. He began shivering uncontrollably in my arms, and something inside of him seemed to break. He suddenly became a scared, vulnerable boy, losing the strong demeanour he had held earlier. I felt my heart shatter.

"Dan, I don't want to die," he whispered, looking at me pleadingly. Suddenly the light left his eyes, and he became limp in my arms. Just like that. Gone in a heartbeat. And I felt my world tear apart.

**Third person POV**

Dan started screaming, a tortured and tormented sound. Never had anything sounded so pained, so full of angst and anguish. He hugged Phil's lifeless form into his body tightly. Sobs wracked his body, causing him to shake. And then he started screaming Phil's name, as if he thought Phil would magically wake up. But Phil was dead, and he was never coming back. He was just a memory now: a person to be remembered.

The cracked champagne bottle lay on the pavement, a metaphor in many ways, for things that could've been, but were broken, swept away by life's cruel happenings. Phan could've been a thing, and it would've been eventually, if not for the unfortunate murder of Phil Lester. All that was left now was a broken boy, clutching the love of his life in his arms, his agonising screams breaking the quiet. Dan wanted Phil back more than anything.

\--

**Dan's POV**

I stood in the doorway of Phil's room, observing it as it had been before his untimely exit from it. The covers on his bed lay crumpled, an imprint of his head on one of the pillows. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, crumpled without care for their presentation. A book lay face down and open on his bed. At further inspection I saw the title clearly displayed: Romeo and Juliet. I chuckled darkly at the irony; we all know how that play ends.

I glanced at his bookshelf and observed all the other titles. There were plays, novels and novellas. Love stories, sci-fi, horror and tragedies. It reflected Phil's love for words. Although his viewers might not have realised, as he didn't really convey it in his videos, he really appreciated words, having them roll off his tongue with ease, somewhat poetically at times.

_"What's up, Phil?" I asked, looking over at him as he sighed in frustration at the book he was reading. He looked into my eyes, shaking his head in disappointment, not directed towards me, but to the book he was reading._

_"People need to write with emotion, Dan. This crap," he said, waving the book in front of my face, "has no sentiment. Every word, every sentence has to have meaning. Words need to be appreciated; you can't just simply define by definition. You need to have a story behind what you write, just as a painter does with every stroke of their brush. It has to mean something to you. You can't write about a sensitive topic if you're desensitised. Does the word 'home' mean the same to both you and I? Does the word 'love' have the same definition to everyone? No, Dan, it doesn't. We can interpret words as we please, but we damn well need to do it with feeling."_

It was things like this that I loved about him. He was so full of surprises, and I was constantly learning new things about him. But now there were no chances left; I'd learnt all I could. There were probably a million things I didn't know about him: a mystery to remain unsolved.

I walked further into his room, picking a random item of clothing off the floor. I smiled weakly when I saw it was his iconic Gengar t-shirt. I brought it up against my nose, taking in Phil's scent. I felt the tears pooling in my eyes; it still smelt like him. I dropped to the floor on my knees, clutching Phil's shirt tightly in my hands. I wanted him back. I wanted to hug him, smell that sweet scent in person, rather than on an inert object. I wanted to run my hands through his hair, get lost in the azure of his eyes. Why couldn't I be the dead one? He deserved to be here, not me.

_Do it, Dan. There's nobody left that cares._

I dropped the shirt and ran out of his room. It was too much for me, and I needed to get out of there before I started to destroy his things. I ran into the kitchen, standing there for a second, before grabbing the closed thing to me and throwing it against the wall. _Smash!_ A glass now lay in pieces on the floor. It didn't feel good, it didn't feel great, nor did it make me feel any better, but heck, it did make me feel _something_. And something was conceivably better than nothing.

I began throwing a flurry of things: plates, bowls, mugs and more glasses. All with no regard; they were possessions, worthless and meaningless things. They could be replaced. Any damned thing could be replaced, anything but human life. A thing so precious and fragile, but it could so easily be ripped away from us. Phil had a life, he had dreams, he had aspirations, he had hope. But some sick bastard had taken that away from him. Nothing was left. And the quiet was deafening, the darkness blinding.

I placed my hands on my ears, pressing down tightly. I had always been hyper-aware of my thoughts, but sometimes it became too much. My thoughts swirled around in my head, a whirlwind of disconnected words and emotions. The darkness was creeping in, but I no longer had the light to brighten it. I gripped my hair and started screaming in anger and despair. Too much. It was too fucking much.

_He's not here anymore. There's nothing left to live for. Do it, Dan. DO IT._

\--

I ran along the pavement, my bare feet stinging as they made contact with the concrete, my heart pounding in my chest. The rain poured down from the sky, causing my clothes to cling to me, and my hair to plaster against my forehead. Disembodied headlights moved at different speeds past me. The sounds of the city were drowned out by the constant screaming of the voices in my ears, in my head.

I was completely aware of the fact that I was conscious, I was alive. But I knew that I sure as hell wasn't living. This wasn't what life was supposed to be like. I wasn't supposed to feel a gaping void inside of myself, but I did, and that used to be filled by Phil. And now he wasn't here. There was no purpose to my existence, and I tried and tried to find something to cling on to, something to strive for, but there was nothing. I couldn't clamber out of this bottomless pit, all I could do was fall. And it wouldn't stop. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how far into the corners of my mind I dug, I came back with a deluge of banality every single fucking time. Every attemp, every effort was met with a jab of pain. And damn it, it hurt. It hurt so bad.

My inability to function without Phil was affecting me to the point where I was beginning to conjure up periods of incomprehensible thought, meaningless ramblings of my tenebrous mind. Why was it so hard to forget? So hard to move on? And then it came to me: how could I forget? He gave me so much to remember, so much hope, so much feeling. Phil had managed to subconsciously do what nobody had ever done for me. He had given me strive, a purpose.

I'd always been a misfit, a deviant from society, the emo guy with the weird hair. I just didn't feel like I fit into a box, I didn't want to be held down by the chains of society, I didn't want to be told what I was, who I was, and just be limited to that. I admired individuality, those who were different. But people seemed to like labels, they liked to be told which bracket they fit in. And all I wanted to do was to be free from that. Phil had helped me escape from those confines. Phil was everything to me. But he was gone, sucked into the oblivion of never-ending nihility.

My feet came to a stop at the foot of a fire escape. I looked up, relishing in the sheer height in which it went up the building. I began to run up the stairs, the metal wet and slick from the rain. The sound of splashing and feet making contact with metal sounded in my ears. I couldn't stop running, not even if I desired to. My sub-conscience was taking me there, a one way trip to my demise.

My feet kept moving, my legs kept driving, proving that I was alive, that my heart was beating. But my brain was a mess, the unintelligible thoughts all articulating into one seemingly salient thought, one fathomable thing amongst things that were supposed to be unfathomable: my brain was telling me to jump, to jump when I got high enough, to jump to end it all. At first I was trying to discern whether it was me or the voices creating the thoughts, but then it hit me. The voices were me, they were my own thoughts, and the most deplorable ones at that. They had always been me, the thoughts so bad that I was trying to pass them off as something other than my own.

It had taken me this long to realise, this damn long to figure that it had been me all that time: all those bad things the voices had said to me, all those opinions, all those actions. Every single thing that the voices had expressed had actually been my own subconscious thoughts, illustrated though means that had made me think it had been... Something else. But what? What had I actually managed to convince myself that my own thoughts were? An occult force? I had no conceptualisation over where my mind had been, but I knew I couldn't speculate any longer on my interpretation on things that were no longer relevant. There were more important things to ponder over, such as the matter that my feet had stopped moving, my destination seemingly reached.

I sat down on the metal grid platform with my back against the wall of the building. I tilted my head up, sweeping my gaze across the city. The view was undeniably spectacular, and combined with the cool air and the rain on my face, I had never felt so alive. I had never been, although I had always been super conscious of the fact, so aware of my heart pounding in my chest, my blood rushing through my veins. There's nothing like having death so prominently running up to you, being faced with the metaphorical scythe of the Grim Reaper, that can remind you so blatantly that, yes you're alive, but yes, you're going to die.

I suppose that should've been the time when I was supposed to remember the good times, the laughs and the happiness. But all my happiness had been sourced from Phil, but he was dead, and that's why I was here, right? The wrong one died. I should be the one who bled to death, I shouldn't be here. Life was so fucking unfair. Why wasn't I dead? I mean, I was going to die soon anyway, but that was besides the point; Phil should've been alive, and I should've been dead. He should still have his life, his everything. But that wasn't how things had worked out. Instead of what should've been, I was faced by reality. A harsh truth. An unfairest of outcomes. And all the 'why' questions circled around in my head. _Why the fuck had this happened?_

I glanced out at London for one last time. The lights that filtered out of the many buildings glinted like an array of stars, a beautiful thing in my eyes. I noticed colours and shades that I had never noticed before, background noises that had always seemed so extraneous, so tenuous. All the little things in life didn't seem so little anymore. I had never realised how blind I had been to the beauty of the world, and yet could a world without Phil really be considered beautiful?

I screamed in frustration. How can one person affect you so much? How can one single person change your life so dramatically, that when they're gone, part of you feels dead as well? The pain was eating me up from inside, like a monster was clawing at my heart, a monster that fed off all the happiness, taking what little you had away from you. Insurmountable amounts of emotion slammed into me. I didn't want any of this, I didn't want to feel things as I did. I wanted to be emotionless, and yet that wasn't possible. Nothing that I wanted was possible.

It had always felt as if the universe was against me. Meeting Phil was simultaneously both the worst and the best thing to ever happen to me. All the anguish inside of me was cancelled out by something good he had done. But now he wasn't here, so there was nobody to numb the pain. I had nobody, and an overwhelming sense of seclusion overcame me. Who would care if I died?

I stood up from my position, walking over to the edge of the platform. Had I had a good life? In an overwhelming sense, no, I hadn't. And yet there was Phil, the guy who lit up my entire world. He had helped me experience some normality in my life. He truly was an angel to walk the Earth. He was an embodiment of all things a person should aspire to be. In other words, he was perfect. And I had loved him dearly because of that.

"Daniel James Howell, don't you dare." A voice said from behind me. I whipped my head around, startled by the voice, even more so as it sounded like-

"Phil." I whispered, taking in the view of his transpicuous form. My heart skipped a beat. It was undoubtedly Phil; everything from his cerulean orbs to his raven-black hair proved so. But ghosts weren't supposed to be real, and yet Phil stood in front of me, looking as he normally did, no stab wounds, no blood: just Phil as he should be, except the slightly faded and semi-transparent look, but I suppose that's what happened when you were in different dimensions. I reached out to touch him, my hand passing right through him. I felt a pang in my chest.

"Phil, how the fuck are you here? Why are you here? There are so many things I want to say to you. Damn, it has been so hard without you. You have no idea. You know, it feels so-"

"Dan," Phil said, placing a finger on my lips, which really accomplished nothing in the physical sense, but the gesture proved enough for me, "I don't have long, so listen, okay? I know it hurts, trust me, I do. But, Dan, all this pain you're feeling, all this unbearable hurt, it's all part of being human. Anyone in your position would feel as you do. Don't you think I would feel the same if the rolls were switched? You're not any different than anyone else in that sense, you don't have to isolate yourself from everyone else. I'm not asking you to move on, I'm not asking you to love your life, I'm simply asking you to live. To live your life as any lucky human on this Earth. Life is a damned lucky thing to have, Dan, and you don't realise that until you've lost your own."

"I can't, Phil. You are everything to me. A life without you isn't worth living."

"But I love you, Dan. Surely that should be enough for you? Don't end your life on my account. I want you to live a long life, unlike me. I haven't got any chances to fulfil my dreams, but you have chance to reach your own, and you had better appreciate that opportunity. I've only realised my mistake now," Phil said, ghosting a hand over my heart, "and I'll always be in here, even if you can't see me."

I backed away from the ledge. It took all my strength, emotionally and physically. And yet I knew now that it'd take even more to actually go through with the act. Phil was the love of my life, and I wasn't going to deem what he said as irrelevant, especially as he had said that he loved me. That had hit a nerve. Phil had started to fade gradually, the brick wall behind him becoming more visible by the second. "Phil, don't go, please."

"I don't have a choice. I assume it means that my work here is done. I didn't get to say it last time, but you're going to hear it now, for real this time. Goodbye, Dan. And that's truly the last time. I really do love you, you know?"

And then he faded completely. Just like that: gone. I felt a wave of sadness again. That was a final goodbye, he was sure of it. The onslaught of emotions was instantaneous. There were positives hidden amongst the negatives, though. Sure, I was sad, unbelievably so, and yet I also felt glad. Glad that I had been able to see him one last time. Glad that I'd been able to share my life with such an amazing person.

He lived up to his username profoundly with everything that he did. I didn't think anyone could ever compete with how he had influenced the world. I didn't think anyone could ever be as amazing as AmazingPhil was. And I was so damned lucky to have spent seven years of my life with him.

"I love you, too, Lion."

**Author's Note:**

> oops sorry about that; it wasnt v good, but oh well, ive written it now, so theres no going back
> 
> please leave comments and kudos, as itll make me feel a lot better about this, truly, it will


End file.
